Continuing the tour of this year's Nebula awards for novellas, I read Blood Grains Speak Through Memories today. The title is interesting and unusual in that it is a compact, exact description of the story. You don't see that every day.
The story itself is on the border between fantasy and technology. We get hints of a post-apocalypse world, where some desperate means was taken or emerged to survive. The lands are tended by "anchors", people who acquire a special connection to the land through the title's "grains". Our protagonist is one such anchor, who is considering carrying out her late husband's plan to rid the world of the grains. They protect the world, but commit a fair amount of evil in the process.
The world is pretty fully built out for a novella. We get a good picture of what it's like to be an anchor on the land. The writing is powerful without getting sappy. I think this one is a contender, it will be hard to beat. I like it enough to say four stars. I haven't read any Jason Sanford in awhile (since 2010), but am glad he's back.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Semiosis, by Sue Burke
I think I liked this better than most reviewers. What I got out of it was an exploration of how human colonists would communicate and share ...
-
There are some interesting theories out there on what Gene Wolfe's "The Ziggurat" short story means . Indeed, Wolfe is heavil...
-
Michael Swanwick is an inspired author, and has some brilliant work out there. He has a series of very short stories called The Sleep of Re...
-
The introduction to Slow Tuesday Night is by Gardner Dozios, the great editor, and he tells us that "only those stories that were the ...
No comments:
Post a Comment